What design philosophy is that? To have half the ‘players’ be bots, and the other half buy gold from those bots to buy gear in GDKPs?
There is no philosophy. Their Pillars were a complete lie. They toss in Retail-like systems like Mythic Lite dungeons that brought toxic gatekeeping to unseen levels in the history of the game.
If you want a good design philosophy then leave the damn game alone. Old Blizzard made good, fun games. New Blizzard just screws them up.
Maybe some of these clowns on the Classic team were part of the 1900 just layed off. Get some people in there who actually respect the old game.
Your other option, as I already pointed out is seasonal. You don’t need to change Era, it’s there for people who don’t want further changes.
You want to have your cake and eat it too.
People have really created a false dichotomy with solo play vs group play. Heck, sometimes I hear people consider solo que for arena as solo content. But RDF isn’t solo content.
WoW has always had stuff to do for solo players. Pretty sure most classic WoW players spend like 90% of their time solo and only play with their friends or randys for dungeons and battlegrounds.
Like now we have SoD players acting elitist about premades, calling PuGs solo content…as if premades were EVER popular prior to SoD.